Ice/snow storms last week-end ravaged the state of Iowa last week-end (and yesterday) .... in my case, power was lost last Saturday .... just restored about a half-hour ago. There were still over 100,000 folks without power from the week-end storm ... yesterday's storm added another 20-30,000 folks to that list.

House is now about 20 degrees above the freezing point, haven't made it to the basement yet to check for what awaits me there. Just thought I'd start my catch-up with this bit of news, explanation of the disappearance.

...Thanks for the update, Wazoo -- it's good to have you back! <big grin>

I pray that the worst is over for you and that the cleanup goes well.

Welcome back - keeping an eye on Weather Undergound and fingers crossed on your behalf and all the others too. You guys are sure having a rough year.

Yep, all the talk about global warming and it feels like we are entering an Ice Age here. On top of it, we have an Ice Man in a tv ad to constantly remind us that Neanderthals were stronger in the last Ice Age.

As far as stronger, I can recall when even I was much stronger myself <g>

But the real issue I would say boils down to technolofy. Neanderthals didn't have so much of it, so they had to 'deal with it' as it came. Issues here were a bit unreal. Towns basically 'disappeared' .... high-voltage lines / towers went down, land-line phones went out, cell-phone towers went down, radio/TV transmission towers went down, roads were closed down, some due to the power lines still being live, some due to the white-out blizzard conditions, some due to the ice/snow packing un addition the high-winds, trees (and power poles) in other areas ... on and on ....

Local tales of non-tech things include running ropes from the one building with a generator or fireplace (with fuel) throughout the town so folks could find their way to that building. Building of human chains to make their way to/from places, doing searches, etc. Bigger and bigger 'machines' sent out along the roads, as even the snow removal machines were getting stuck, lost, etc.

Resource outages at those store/stations still managing to stay open .... batteries, kerosene, basic food stuffs, etc.

Typical catastrophic emergency stuff .. but again, the Neanderrthals weren't quite so 'pampered' to begin with <g>

and not over yet apparently ... sun is out, temperature a couple of degrees above freezing .... brother just called to state that he just now lost power ... recording on the "outage report line" stated that the 'expected' time of repair would be 8 March ..... best I could offer immediately was that as I have yet to retrieve all my food, I've got an empty refrigerator and freezer he could use <g>